Alfred North Whitehead
1861-1947 · Process Philosophy · Known
Whitehead was a British mathematician who co-wrote Principia Mathematica with Russell, then concluded that the universe holds no enduring stuff at all. What exists is a stream of momentary events, each one a flicker of experience that takes up the events before it and adds something of its own, drawn toward what is new by God. He called them actual occasions, and the system process philosophy.
Signature
The position Whitehead is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful
- Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos / Causa Sui / Continuous Creation
Positions on the 9 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (88 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- mildly leans Describable (38 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Changing (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Opposition
- mildly between Sublation and Concurrence (56 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Conviction
- mildly leans Uncertain (31 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
11 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Whitehead refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Process Theism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Harmony
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Natural Emergence
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Other
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Coherence
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos / Causa Sui / Continuous Creation
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Process / Becoming
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Language
- Expression
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Human Nature
- Other / Symbol-Maker
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?